The
good news is, my employers have decided to expand
coverage on the late shifts from two technicians each
to three. As of the third week of February, I found
myself gratefully restored to the graveyard shift,
beginning at midnight. And there was the snow.
A powerful wind was slamming the two outer walls of
our bedroom, beating the house with no sense of
rhythm. It was a great contrast to seeing Ms Keogh,
my more significant other, at rest, asleep, tucked
under a pile of blankets. Long ago I stopped
complaining or worrying about the weather, a popular
pastime where I work. Listening to the wind flogging
our wood-framed house, it seemed in a jolly mood. The
wind was laughing and cheering, thumping our home
with uncontained joy. I extracted myself from a warm
bed, dressed and ejected myself from the still house
into a blustery world of snow. At least it wasn't so
deep that I would have to shovel. On any other
morning I would have greeted the cold with
discontent, it being an ordeal to drag myself through
traffic, but this was my last week on day tour.
The drive to work along Interstate 95 during daylight
hours is rich with views. First the highway passes
between broad fields. Seeing those snow-clad fields
tugged at my genetic memory. It had my Mongolian
blood stampeding through my arteries. To be racing
across the snowy landscape is my birthright. Well, if
I chose to believe my mother's story that sometime
during our ancestor's sojourn on the Steppes of the
Ukraine there was an allegedly uninvited influx of
Mongolian blood.
I did feel the part of a Mongolian horseman during my
motorcycling days. My body design seems to have as
its intended purpose the ability to securely straddle
a horse. A small horse, to be sure. Is it not the
reason I have short legs, yet powerful thighs? This
stocky body is meant for strength and warmth, and to
wear cashmere.
As the highway approaches the Delaware River, it
divides the woods. Traffic was backed up that morning
after the first major snowfall. Patches of the road
were icy. The excited wind was buffeting the car,
launching whirlwinds of powdered snow. Among the tree
trunks the snow was exploding, the ground was on
fire, the forest filled with swirling white smoke.
There were moments when waves of loose snow swept
across the highway causing brief fogs. I watched the
clouds of flakes tumble and reel over the stark
highway from the protected cabin of my car while
listening to Wagner. Wagner was the right music for
the enthusiastic weather.
That week at the office, Dave - one of four Daves in
our office - built a snowman with snow he had carried
in from outside. It was a traditional design, three
large balls of decreasing diameters, twigs for arms,
a carrot nose, but it stood only two feet high and
was erected in a giant salad bowl to contain the
melt. I contributed my old, broken headset to our icy
technician. I could enjoy my last week on days
knowing it was my last week.
Then the blizzard came. It was my first night back on
the graveyard shift, leaving Sunday night to reach
work by midnight. The storm had only just begun. I
shoveled a path to the car and then cleaned off the
car, but I didn't shovel the driveway. Gravity
sufficed to pull the car off the inclined driveway
despite the few inches of snow.
The drive in was difficult, the roadways slippery,
but it wasn't much of a problem because I was the
only car on the road. Despite the snow, the view was
expansive, the slightest light diffused to form
gigantic caverns. Once again on Interstate 95, I was
nearing the Delaware River, where the highway cuts
through a hill. Ahead, three deer came leaping out of
the forest on my left. I slowed. They came down the
incline and with graceful strides dashed across the
broad highway, two lanes southbound, the wide median
strip, and then the two lanes northbound that I was
traveling. I slowed almost to a stop and watched the
three deer, the leader crowned with antlers. They
galloped through my car beams, tossing up bits of
snow, and made their way up the incline on my right,
back into the forest.
I had parked the car in the lot with the tail towards
the wind. I thought by parking in this manner all the
snow would build on the car's rear so I wouldn't have
a hard time cleaning off the windshield, later. I
evidently do not understand the dynamics of snowfall.
The hard wind swept the tail of my car clean. The
front of my car was buried.
Daylight arrived to reveal an impassable U. S. Route
One. The blizzard of 2003 caught three of us, all
techs, snowed into the office. The next tour
technicians, the clerks, and certainly the
management, never made it in. The flat roof of the
building creaked under the snow's weight. But in the
light of day our view from the office extended beyond
the roadway to include Princeton Nursery on the
opposite side. We could see the blizzard's beautiful
fury.
I was still at work when daylight again dissolved
into night. My first night back on my old tour and I
worked eighteen hours. When at last I was relieved by
another tech, I had to borrow a shovel to free my car
from the lot. Although the company had been kind
enough to offer me a room in the nearby hotel, I
preferred to tackle the twenty-five mile trek back to
Ms Keogh, which I accomplished without much hardship,
only to get stuck trying to climb my steep driveway.
I had to shovel again, to make enough space into
which to fit my car. I bathed, we played five hundred
rummy at the kitchen table until I was unwound, then
I climbed back into bed. I fell into a deep sleep,
feeling accomplished, grateful for an eventful day.
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